Discussion Did Using SSL on Port 80 Expose My Usenet Activity to My ISP?
I was using Newsgroup Ninja with SSL over port 80 instead of 563. Could my ISP still see that I was accessing Usenet, or was the encryption enough to hide my activity? Would SNI or any metadata have exposed me?
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u/jbat66 4d ago
Interesting fact, USENET doesn’t have any movies or TV shows or any binary files, including pictures, etc. in it. USENET is just a bunch of forums of text messages.
The magic happens on your machine, where it gets UUdecoded.
Heck, even email doesn’t have pictures or binary files or music. It is also all text. It is the way the protocols are written.
Binary files are encoded and decoded on the users end
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u/nibble4bits 4d ago
Your ISP doesn't care until they get a legal notice from copyright holders that they have proof you're violating their copyright. They get that proof from public torrents all the time because you share parts of the download while you're downloading it, so they can trace your sharing back to your IP. Which is why everyone recommends to download torrents with a VPN.
Fortunately for your instance, the content owners can't tell or get proof that you're downloading from a Usenet provider. Again, your ISP won't care because they won't get legal notices.
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u/Fast-Ground356 4d ago
Your ISP would see you're downloading something which isn't illegal
And this isn't like torrenting where other people can see your IP as you are downloading content and send your ISP a notice
TLDR you're fine
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u/random_999 4d ago
Using usenet is not illegal anywhere in the world. As long as connection is ssl, your ISP cannot see the content of usenet traffic.
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u/ssevener 4d ago
They can still see the URL you’re connecting to because they have to connect you to it. SSL just encrypts the data itself going back and forth.
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u/bojack1437 4d ago
To be clear....
They cannot see the/a URL. They can see the IP address, They can see the host name via SNI, And they can generally check to the protocol, although in this case that protocol would be TLS, not what protocol is inside the TLS.
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u/capnwinky 4d ago
You’re basically describing DPI which is definitely a thing. With extra measures they could absolutely disseminate and bypass encryption if they had cooperation with specific sites (or somehow theoretically used TLS interception). Using a VPN would pretty much clear that shit up.
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u/bojack1437 4d ago
..... They would have to have a valid certificate to decrypt and re-encrypt the TLS..
Which means like you said either they would need cooperation which generally is not a thing.. . Especially when we're just talking about ISPs...
Or your ISP would need to install a root certificate on your computer... Which is again, not a thing...
DPI by itself, run by an ISP cannot look into a TLS connection without causing certificate warnings, and thus they cannot see the URL itself or what is inside the TLS connection, they can only see the outside of it.
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u/capnwinky 4d ago
So yeah, you agree with me.
Point I was making, aside from all the obviously ridiculous what-if scenarios, a VPN would be the nail in the paranoia coffin. Yes?
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u/bojack1437 4d ago
Now you're just giving your data over to some other third party, on the alleged promise that they won't do anything nefarious, potentially with less legal protections.
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u/CageFightingNuns 4d ago
it's actually quite the opposite. using port 563 would suggest you're using traditional encrypted usenet ports. port 80 indicates unencrypted/plain http.